Regina R. is a 12-year-old girl with recently diagnosed insulin-dependent diabetes. Before discharging her from the hospital, her family physician and consulting diabetes specialist try to instruct the girl and her parents in the appropriate program of treatment, including diet, insulin, and regular self-monitoring. However, the parents become upset when they learn what is involved in insulin treatment and inform the family physician they plan to employ the services of an alternative healing clinic that promises to cure their daughter with (...) a combination of herbal potions, macrobiotics, aroma therapy, therapeutic touch, Ayurveda, homeopathy, and guided imagery. (shrink)

"The medical establishment has become a major threat to health. The disabling impact of professional control over medicine has reached the proportions of an epidemic. Iatrogenesis, the name for this new epidemic, comes from iatros, the Greek word for physician, and genesis, meaning origin. Discussion of the disease of medical progress has moved up on the agendas of medical conferences, researchers concentrate on the sick-making powers of diagnosis and therapy, and reports on paradoxical damage caused by cures for sickness take (...) up increasing space in medical dope-sheets [...] The public has been alerted to the perplexity and uncertainty of the best among its hygienic caretakers [...] This book argues that panic is out of place. Thoughtful public discussion of the iatrogenic pandemic, beginning with an insistence upon demystification of all medical matters, will not be dangerous to the commonweal."-- from Introduction. (shrink)